<\/p>\n
THE ESSENTIAL FRAME: RECENT HISTORY
\n<\/b>4 June\u20149 July 2003
\nThe Essential Frame UK Tour: Programme 2<\/p>\n
TRADITION IST DIE WEITERGABE DES FEUERS UND NICHT DIE ANBETUNG DER ASCHE<\/strong>
\nGustav Deutsch, 1999, 35mm, colour, sound, 1 min
\n<\/strong>An elegy to nitrate film material. Image by Deutsch, sound by Fennesz.
\n\u201cSome found footage \u2013 made of cellulose nitrate \u2013 the material
\nFire \u2013 a threat to nitrate film \u2013 its theme
\nA quote \u2013 from Gustav Mahler \u2013 its message
\nThe soundtrack \u2013 by Christian Fennesz \u2013 as the bridge\u201d \u2014Gustav Deutsch, 1999<\/p>\nPARTY<\/strong>
\nDietmar Brehm, 1995, 16mm, b\/w, sound, 18 min
\n<\/strong>\u201c<\/strong>Sometimes I film so that the actors seem to belong to the undead. The construction of the Found-Footage-Party shows Russian, Japanese, American and my own material which is hallucinated into a matrix in which functioning and non-functioning body parts appear as optical lubricant shadow labyrinth whilst simultaneously we hear someone shaving.\u201d \u2014Dietmar Brehm<\/p>\nPARALLEL SPACE: INTER-VIEW
\nPeter Tscherkassky, 1992, 16mm, b\/w, sound, 18 min
\n<\/strong>The \u2018physics of seeing\u2019 and the \u2018physics of memory\u2019 in a flickering condensation of space and time.
\n\u201cParallel Space: Inter-View<\/em> is made with a photo camera. A miniature photo 24 x 36mm is exactly the size of two film frames. Originally, I had a strict, formal concept. The visual space of the Renaissance locked in the optics of the film and still camera. In front of our eyes the landscapes of the film spread out and allow themselves be conquered; a constellation which is then subverted by letting the hardware and the software slip minimally. If I take a photograph with a strict central perspective (the vanishing point in the middle), it gets smashed when projected. The spatial lines plunge towards the lower edge of one frame, to be ripped apart at the top of the next. Optically it resembles a flickering double exposure; the former temporal and spatial unity disintegrates into pieces that have a correspondence with each other. Soon these spatial constructions were not enough. I began to interpret the content of both spatial halves \u2013 to lead the spectator\u2019s separation from the surrounding reality into another sequence of binary opposites: listener-speaker; viewer-viewed; public-private; man-woman; sensuality (emotion)-reason; sexuality-taboo, and so on. In addition, I took the psychoanalytic setting and drew a comparison with the cinema setting. In both cases there is a narrator who does not see or know his listener. Filmmakers, in common with the analysists, produce a very intimate flow of pictures which are met with highly concentrated attention but still fall into the anonymity of the audience\u2026\u201d \u2014Peter Tscherkassky<\/p>\nALONE. LIFE WASTES ANDY HARDY<\/strong>
\nMartin Arnold, 1998, 16mm, b\/w, sound, 15 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cIn his new film Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy<\/em> which, together with pi\u00e8ce touch\u00e9e<\/em> and passage \u00e0 l\u2019acte<\/em>, forms a sort of trilogy of compulsive repetition, Arnold\u2019s campaign of deconstruction of classic Hollywood film codes finally turns to film music. The process links in with the other two films. The family scenes, which in the original last only seconds and are not particularly notable, are surgically sectioned into single frames. Using repetition of these \u2018single cells\u2019 and a new rhythm \u2013 a kind of cloning procedure \u2013 Arnold then creates an inflated, monstrous doppelg\u00e4nger of the original cuts lasting many minutes. The hidden message of sex and violence is turned inside out to the point where it simply crackles. In Alone\u2026<\/em> the crossing of three harmless teenager films gives birth to an Oedipal drama in which not only mother love mutates to sheer lust. Since passage \u00e0 l\u2019acte<\/em>, and contrary to other found-footage filmmakers who choose to remove their work into the realms of silent nostalgia, Arnold has re-worked the soundtrack along with the image. Because of this what one hears in Alone\u2026<\/em>is the eerie, rasping \u201csilence\u201d of sound film, pregnant with suppressed tension. And exactly at the point where the illusion of full, living present is seemingly at its strongest \u2013 in the screen presence of Judy Garland singing \u2013 one senses the machine, and, implicitly, death, at work.\u201d \u2014Dirk Schaefer<\/p>\nSEMIOTIC GHOSTS
\nLisl Ponger, 1990, 16mm, colour, sound, 17 min
\n<\/strong>Footage collected on travels around the world is assembled as a powerful inquiry into photographic language. \u201cIn my films I have confronted the question of what a frame is, what movement and light signify. There is no story, the story is the pictures.\u201d
\n\u201cIn one interview about Semiotic Ghosts<\/em>, Ponger once made the following comparison: \u201cThe narrative feature film compared to the associative film is like the verbally speaking human being compared to the one who uses sign language to communicate.\u201d As an inspiration for Semiotic Ghosts<\/em> she named a 19th Century Swiss book on the pedagogy of how to educate the deaf. To function as an equal to the spoken word, sign language, besides basic and distinctive meanings, must to go through a process of conventionalisation to establish itself. Therefore the myth of the universal and the \u2018naturally given\u2019 does not exist. But there is no doubt, that sign language makes use of shape, size and movement. It expresses itself imitatively and is therefore universal. It therefore has also greater iconic potential than the verbal language. The second shot of the film shows the 1st Egyptian Blind Women\u2019s Orchestra. Only in the third take, the one of the \u2018grim reaper\u2019, the sound comes in. By privileging the image over the sound, it establishes the hierarchy of the senses from the outset. But on a closer look we have to learn that this is not the case. First of all the sound follows exactly the image in which the seeing became precarious, awkward (through watching the blind girls) and secondly Ponger uses a soundtrack which is appropriate, like no other, to transmit the idea of the \u2018polytonal\u2019. To the end of the film we hear the sounds produced by the tuning of the instruments for the Blind Women\u2019s Orchestra. Each of the different instruments sound for themselves, representing the richness, the reservoir, the paradigms, only at the end, a sense of unity evolves.\u201d \u2014Gabriele Jutz<\/p>\n\u00c4GYPTEN
\nKathrin Resetarits, 1996, 16mm, b\/w, sound, 10 min
\n<\/strong>At first a sensitive essay about communication between the deaf; the gestural actions of signing are intimated for the uninformed. But by equating sign language with film language, Resetarits forges a quiet demonstration of the power of cinema.
\n\u201c\u00c4gypten<\/em> is a film which is almost silent. A film about deaf mutes, or rather about their sign language \u2013 a language which, like the Egyptian hieroglyphs, links the symbolic terminology of words with the mimetic and analogous representations of graphic gestures. Sober black and white scenes show how \u2018shark\u2019, \u2018widow\u2019, \u2018Marilyn Monroe\u2019, a James Bond sequence, a Viennese song or the account of a treasure hunt undertaken by two holidaymakers looks in sign language. It is a very modest indication, an introduction to an unfamiliar way of experiencing the world, where one sees the sounds without hearing them.\u201d \u2014Drehli Robnik<\/p>\nTO THE HAPPY FEW
\nThomas Draschan & Stella Friedrichs, 2003, 16mm, colour, sound, 5 min
\n<\/strong>The Splice is Right. A highly charged cosmic mandala, fusing found footage with Bollywood music.
\n\u201cThe film is structured around the mystical idea of the mandala, in this case pictures of (fake) suns, galaxies and planets. These images are in sync with an Indian Bollywood song to enhance the pseudo-psychedelic effects. The film material covers a very wide range of found footage from various sources and decades starting in the 1930s (invisible woman) until the end of the 1980s.\u201d \u2014Thomas Draschan, 2003<\/p>\nOPUS 7
\nAlexander Curtis, 1993, 16mm, colour, silent, 4 min
\n<\/strong>Composition and perspective are broken down as the camera view is flattened into its geometric forms. A magic lantern trick for viewer and projector.
\n\u201cFilm \u2013 Perspective \u2013 Geometry. An ironic self-portrait and a sentimental look back at the early and prehistory of Cinema\u201d \u2014Alexander Curtis<\/p>\nBack to top<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE ESSENTIAL FRAME: RECENT HISTORY 4 June\u20149 July 2003 The Essential Frame UK Tour: Programme 2 A selection of recent work demonstrating a more poetic and contemplative cinema. Through their awareness of the past and an engagement with the pioneering work of the 50s and 60s, these contemporary artists have developed original and dynamic approaches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essential-frame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}